I honestly believe I learned more as a teacher than my students did from the experience, which is not an admittance of shame or remorse. To the contrary I think it's as it should be. Any teacher who doesn't learn more from the experience of teaching than the students do from being taught should find a new job. Teachers start with a good student's knowledge of their subjects but before they can explain their subjects to their students they must come to an even deeper level of insight. But that's just the beginning of why teachers learn more. It's being in charge of people and observing human behavior patterns in a setting where the directions those patterns move directly effect the achievement of goals.
I started out teaching with my feet squarely planted in the behaviorist school of psychology. I believed that all I needed to do was introduce the right set of rewards and punishments and I would inevitably end up with a well behaved group of students.
By my last teaching day I had been completely converted to what they call the humanist school of psychology. Human beings, unlike rats and other animals the behaviorists experimented on, cherish their freedom to make decisions so much they are willing to forgo great rewards and endure much punishment just so they can say to themselves, "I made my own choices and not the ones people pushed me towards".
Oh sure, there are studies that show how human behavior can in fact be influenced by carefully planned and orchestrated inputs, but those studies betray themselves. They don't actually show how to control human behavior, only influence it, and then only when the subject doesn't realize it's being done.
Whether the exceptions to the aggregate trend are responding to other more powerful external inputs, asserting free will, or some mix between is still completely unsettled by these studies' data. Likewise the answer to the question as to why those who do respond as desired do so, is still unanswered. Is it because their decisions are little more than predictably responses, because they just don't happen to care enough to swim against the figurative current, or something else?
I for one came to have a great respect for human will, and rejected behaviorism as an effective model for effectively managing human relationships.
At the very least individuals are driven to reject complete external control. So what does that make true of anyone who, knowing this about people, still tries to impose it? If a child treats a stuffed animal like a friend, what would we think of an adult who tore it part in front of the child and gleefully announced, "see, it doesn't bleed because it isn't a real animal"? Our disdain would probably be well deserved.
Now being a cruel thing to attempt to impose on people, doesn't make behaviorism a bad theory. We shouldn't reject theories and ideas in science because they threaten our sense of decency. There is definitely a legitimate line of inquiry to be followed there, one that has and can continue to offer new and useful insights into human behavior. But we need to recognize when the results of science are best not applied.
On the other hand, in the case of free will, it's a self-evident reality. By that I don't mean to be ridiculous. I'm not saying the existence of free will proves itself beyond all doubt and that should settle the argument. No, not at all. What I am saying is that we decide how we perceive reality itself.
Does it exist? Do we exist? Like a blind person suddenly plunged into water and upon finding a steady surface object to grab, we decide quickly if we're going to try holding onto it. We wont know if that decision was a good or not until after we've committed to it. That's all of us on existence. We all pretty much have committed to the idea that we exist and have found that base assumption an effective starting point for rational thought.
We could alternately start with the assumption that we don't exist or even more nebulously that we just don't know if we do, but those directions have yet to be shown as even remotely practical. All reasoning begins to seem pointless once we do. None the less some people pursue and have pursued those very paths.
It seems that we decide to accept the assumption that we exist, since it's possible to accept one of its alternatives, and some have. Thus we seem to have free will. Our free will is like our existence, an assumption we see as practical and thus we make. Until one can demonstrate a consistent method to absolutely control human behavior through external stimuli, there is no practical reason for most of us to assume anything else but that we have free will.
It could be simply said that we choose to believe we have free will or we don't. Either way the existence of our free will is corroborated. It becomes a truly ridiculous exercise to try and convince someone who believes they have free will to choose otherwise.
I started out teaching with my feet squarely planted in the behaviorist school of psychology. I believed that all I needed to do was introduce the right set of rewards and punishments and I would inevitably end up with a well behaved group of students.
By my last teaching day I had been completely converted to what they call the humanist school of psychology. Human beings, unlike rats and other animals the behaviorists experimented on, cherish their freedom to make decisions so much they are willing to forgo great rewards and endure much punishment just so they can say to themselves, "I made my own choices and not the ones people pushed me towards".
Oh sure, there are studies that show how human behavior can in fact be influenced by carefully planned and orchestrated inputs, but those studies betray themselves. They don't actually show how to control human behavior, only influence it, and then only when the subject doesn't realize it's being done.
Whether the exceptions to the aggregate trend are responding to other more powerful external inputs, asserting free will, or some mix between is still completely unsettled by these studies' data. Likewise the answer to the question as to why those who do respond as desired do so, is still unanswered. Is it because their decisions are little more than predictably responses, because they just don't happen to care enough to swim against the figurative current, or something else?
I for one came to have a great respect for human will, and rejected behaviorism as an effective model for effectively managing human relationships.
At the very least individuals are driven to reject complete external control. So what does that make true of anyone who, knowing this about people, still tries to impose it? If a child treats a stuffed animal like a friend, what would we think of an adult who tore it part in front of the child and gleefully announced, "see, it doesn't bleed because it isn't a real animal"? Our disdain would probably be well deserved.
Now being a cruel thing to attempt to impose on people, doesn't make behaviorism a bad theory. We shouldn't reject theories and ideas in science because they threaten our sense of decency. There is definitely a legitimate line of inquiry to be followed there, one that has and can continue to offer new and useful insights into human behavior. But we need to recognize when the results of science are best not applied.
On the other hand, in the case of free will, it's a self-evident reality. By that I don't mean to be ridiculous. I'm not saying the existence of free will proves itself beyond all doubt and that should settle the argument. No, not at all. What I am saying is that we decide how we perceive reality itself.
Does it exist? Do we exist? Like a blind person suddenly plunged into water and upon finding a steady surface object to grab, we decide quickly if we're going to try holding onto it. We wont know if that decision was a good or not until after we've committed to it. That's all of us on existence. We all pretty much have committed to the idea that we exist and have found that base assumption an effective starting point for rational thought.
We could alternately start with the assumption that we don't exist or even more nebulously that we just don't know if we do, but those directions have yet to be shown as even remotely practical. All reasoning begins to seem pointless once we do. None the less some people pursue and have pursued those very paths.
It seems that we decide to accept the assumption that we exist, since it's possible to accept one of its alternatives, and some have. Thus we seem to have free will. Our free will is like our existence, an assumption we see as practical and thus we make. Until one can demonstrate a consistent method to absolutely control human behavior through external stimuli, there is no practical reason for most of us to assume anything else but that we have free will.
It could be simply said that we choose to believe we have free will or we don't. Either way the existence of our free will is corroborated. It becomes a truly ridiculous exercise to try and convince someone who believes they have free will to choose otherwise.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMb00lz-IfE&src_vid=9rIy0xY99a0&feature=iv&annotation_id=annotation_2639642459
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